RF Shorts for June 21, 2013

IEEE Publication Sheds Light on Samsung’s Millimeter Broadband I recently reported on Samsung's millimeter broadband 5G technology. Last week the IEEE Spectrum magazine provided a critical look at this technology in Millimeter Waves May Be the Future of 5G Phones – Samsung’s millimeter-wave transceiver technology could enable ultrafast mobile broadband by 2020 Ariel Bleicher writes: “Wireless products that use millimeter waves already exist for fixed, line-of-sight transmissions. And a new indoor wireless standard known as WiGig will soon allow multigigabit data transfers between devices in the same room. But there are reasons engineers have long avoided millimeter waves for broader mobile coverage. For one thing, these waves don’t penetrate solid materials very well. They also tend to lose more energy than do lower frequencies over long distances, because they are readily absorbed or scattered by gases, rain, and foliage. And because a single millimeter-wave antenna has a small aperture, it needs more power to send and receive data than is practical for cellular systems.”

Bleicher quotes Afif Osseiran, a master researcher at Ericsson and project coordinator for the Mobile and wireless communication Enablers for the Twenty-twenty Information Society (METIS). “This is still theoretical; it has to be proven. Millimeter-wave technology is only one part of a bigger pie.”

Osseiran said that METIS is considering other technologies, including new data coding and modulation techniques, better interference management, densely layered small cells, multihop networks, and advanced receiver designs to meet “5G” needs, noting a key characteristic of 5G networks will be the use of many diverse systems that must work together.

Guide Available for Google's ‘Project Loon’ Readwrite.com has offered A Handy Guide to Google's Project Loon. Project Loon is one of Google's solutions for bringing the Internet to rural areas through the use of hotspots with satellite Internet connectivity supported by balloons that will move around the globe at altitudes above those used by commercial aircraft. The Handy Guide should provide answers to common questions about the project, such as how Google plans to maneuver the balloons.